Rumour Mongering: Liverpool and Manchester United Fight for Koopmeiners

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Atalanta’s Teun Koopmeiners is a standout in midfield but it’s hard to see where the £60M-rated player would fit in this Liverpool side.

Last summer, with Liverpool busy rebuilding their midfield core, the Reds were regularly linked with Atalanta’s positionally flexible Dutchman Teun Koopmeiners, a Serie A standout most suited to a more attacking role but able to do any job in the middle of the park.

In the end, they added Dominik Szoboszlai and then Ryan Gravenberch to early summer signing Alexis Mac Allister. Add in the growth last season of Curtis Jones and Harvey Elliott and one might safely assume Liverpool’s midfield is set when it comes to players for the eight or ten roles.

Safe assumptions, though, get in the way of rumour mongering, and so today we find the chatter out of Italy having Liverpool back in for Koopmeiners this summer, as Tutto Atalanta claim the Reds and historic rivals Manchester United are both moving for the player.

Koopmeiners is now 26 years old and is coming off a standout 2023-24 campaign where he made 51 total appearances, scoring 15 goals and adding seven helpers over 3,922 minutes, a goal involvement every 178 minutes to go with some very solid defensive numbers for a more attack-minded player.

If Liverpool actually needed an eight or ten type midfielder, Koopmeiners would be ideal, and his reported price tag in the £50-60M range wouldn’t seem out of line with his talent. The problem, of course, is that there simply isn’t space for him at Anfield this summer.

There was a window over the last two seasons when Koopmeiners would have been an exciting signing for the Reds, but his position simply isn’t one where the club need or can afford to spend big money and so this seems likely a case of lazy rumour mongers reviving an old story.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com